Kao Revises its Guidelines for Supplier's Assessment to Further Promote Use of Sedex

Sustainability Topics

2017/11/09

Kao Revises its Guidelines for Supplier's Assessment to Further Promote Use of Sedex

Kao revised its Guidelines for Supplier's Assessment*1 to request Kao Group suppliers to give as much consideration to human rights and environmental protection as Kao in June 2017. And Kao will use Sedex*2 to check Kao Group suppliers' compliance with these guidelines.

Kao supports sustainable and responsible procurement that contributes to resolving environmental, social and ethical issues in procurement activities. To that end, Kao has established the Policies for Procurement*3 and is working to promote these policies.
Our Guidelines for Supplier's Assessment specify social and environmental issues to be considered by our group companies when selecting suppliers that provide Kao with various materials and services under the Policies for Procurement (Kao Group suppliers). These guidelines were established in 2013 based on the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact*4 and other regulations.
In 2015, we published the Kao Human Rights Policy.*5 As a company targeted by the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015,*6 we were also obligated to check for human rights violations at work in our supply chain. Therefore, in June 2017, we revised our Guidelines for Supplier's Assessment to request Kao Group suppliers to give as much consideration to human rights and environmental protection as Kao.

In the current revision, we have newly defined standards to check Kao Group suppliers' compliance with the Guidelines for Supplier's Assessment and will use Sedex for this check.
We had implemented the monitoring of Kao Group suppliers using our original self assessment questionnaire. For further responsible procurement we joined Sedex in 2014 as Japan's first AB member. We have also encouraged Kao Group suppliers to join Sedex and to date have used Sedex together with approximately 900 companies worldwide.
Kao also uses Sedex for supply chain assessments stipulated by the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015.

Kao will continue promoting sustainable and responsible procurement going forward to contribute to the sustainability of our society.

*2: Sedex
A non-profit organization established in 2004 in the United Kingdom to provide a platform designed to manage and share data on the ethical performance of companies with the aim of supporting responsible business practices in supply chains.
Sedex is currently one of the world's largest organizations, with a membership of approximately 40,000 companies/organizations/factories/self-employed workers in over 28 industries in 150 countries around the world.

*4: Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact
Ten universal principles proposed by the United Nations to be enacted by businesses within the scope of their authority in the following four areas: human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption.
See the following websites:

*6: UK Modern Slavery Act 2015
A British act that mandates corporations conducting business in the United Kingdom with global sales exceeding 36 million British pounds to check and report on the presence or absence of slave labor, human trafficking and exploitation within their companies and supply chains.